Egypt arrests Brotherhood leader as crackdown intensifies

CAIRO, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Egyptian police on Thursday
detained Mohamed Ali Bishr, one of the few Muslim Brotherhood
leaders to escape jail after last year's overthrow of Islamist
president Mohamed Mursi, extending a sweeping crackdown on
political dissent.

Bishr, a veteran politician who served as a cabinet minister
under Mursi, was accused of inciting violence and terrorism, and
of seeking to overthrow the government after he called for mass
protests on Nov. 28, state media said.

Since the army toppled Mursi in July 2013, Egypt has banned
the Brotherhood, its oldest Islamist movement, labelled it a
terrorist organisation and rounded up thousands of its members.
The Brotherhood has denied any involvement in militant violence.

With much of the leadership, including Mursi, in jail, Bishr
had played a key role in keeping the group's activities alive
underground. He was also involved in a pressure group that had
pushed for Mursi's reinstatement and was banned last
month.

The group, the National Coalition to Support Legitimacy and
Reject the Coup, condemned Bishr's arrest, which came a day
after 25 protesters were detained in downtown
Cairo.

"We reject the continuation of rabid attacks against
components of the coalition and its members... and against the
sons and daughters of the student protest movement," the group
said on its Facebook page.

The outlawed Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing
of the Brotherhood, condemned the arrest and said Bishr had
served seven years in jail, in 1999-2002 and 2006-2010.

Bishr is be held for 15 days of questioning, according to
state media.

Once among Egypt's best-organised and most successful
political movements, the Brotherhood won the first parliamentary
and presidential elections after the 2011 Tahrir Square
revolution that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi governed for a year, but angered many Egyptians by
giving himself sweeping powers and mismanaging the economy,
prompting mass protests against his rule.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief behind Mursi's removal,
went on to win a presidential election in May and promised that
the Brotherhood would cease to exist under his rule. The
Brotherhood says it is a peaceful movement.
(Reporting by Omar Fahmy and Shadi Bushra, editing by Lin
Noueihed and Mark Heinrich)